It was predictable. Come the last few weeks before the staging of Carnival 2024, the National Carnival Commission (NCC) and the other organising bodies of the festival will contend that the financial allocation by the Government for hosting the festival is “totally insufficient.”
Chairman of the NCC, calypsonian/politician Winston “Gypsy” Peters, has labelled as “inadequate and worrying” the $141 million allocated, $6 million short of last year’s funding, to meet the needs of organising and staging the Carnival.
In a previous editorial comment on hosting and managing elements of Carnival, and most importantly, how this festival is conceived of and planned for, among the points made was the lack of fore-planning; and this of a cultural festival which for decades has demonstrated the potential and ability to become a main economic industry in the context of a limited number of such possibilities.
In essence, what was previously said is the need to remove expenditure on the Carnival from the confines of being part of the annual recurrent expenditure, which varies depending on revenue funds available to the Government.
Placing funding of the Carnival into a budget for economic growth and development, and to begin to perceive of the festival as a cultural-economic creation for internal consumption and for export, are critical to establish and operate a cultural and economic platform.
In the context of the country’s relatively narrow range of viable economic activities, we have to make full use of the attractiveness and potential of a Carnival in which we have a competitive advantage. It’s an advantage which spans historical events; spectacular displays and cultural performances; indigenous experiences connected to millions of people here and in the outside world; known market possibilities in the Diaspora, and to those new inductee countries and cultures spread across a wide geographical expanse.
The artistes have to live by their art and to utilise it as a means of their livelihood. Dr JD Elder, one of the renowned creators of the Best Village and the Heritage Festival in Tobago, never got tired of stating, more like preaching, the realisation of the economic possibilities for cultural activities.
The NCC only comes alive just before the Carnival and goes into hibernation when the event is finished.
A full-time, all-year-round commission is needed to bring the carnival artistes, the musicians, mas’ makers and players, the steelbands and calypsonians, bandleaders, the business community, manufacturers, the impresarios, the security officials, the ministry responsible for art and culture, for tourism and the economic planners together, to begin to conceive of making use of this diamond in the rough we have been producing since the late 18th century in its “all-unsophisticatedness”.
According to NCC chairman Peters, in 2022, T&T Carnival generated $1.3 billion; such a figure can easily scale the $2 billion mark.
Moreover, with proper planning of the Carnival, questions about the source and direction of those funds, why and how they were spent, who have been the beneficiaries, and in what direction the Carnival needs to be expanded to contribute to economic expansion and growth are all to be answered by research.
The bottom line of the mental shift required is for us to begin to conceive of the value of our creations.